Countering the use of culture to dispossess women through the cultural legitimation of women's rights

8 Feb 2011: 12.30 – 15.30.

The multi-country network on Women's Inheritance and Property Rights (WIPR) is organising three panels at the WSF. This network is part of the three-year programme Women Reclaiming and Re-defining Culture, coordinated by Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML) and the Institute for Women’s Empowerment (IWE).

This is the first panel in this series. This panel will discuss how the transnational capitalist quest for increasingly scarce resources is allying with local patriarchal interests and how such convergence is exploiting cultural discourses to facilitate and legitimise the land grab, dispossessing women of homes, land and livelihood resources. The panel will focus on how, despite the fact that Muslim laws and customary laws have diverse interpretations, regressive interpretations are selectively chosen to serve particular interests. The panel will argue for the cultural legitimation of women’s rights to counter the use of cultural discourses to dispossess women.

· Thematic Axis 6: "For a world freed from the principles and structures of capitalism, of patriarchal oppression, of all forms of domination from financial powers, transnational corporations and unequal systems of trade, neocolonial and debt domination"

Speakers:

1. Vivienne Wee from the Institute for Women’s Empowerment (IWE) in Asia

2. Fatou Sow of Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML)

3. Doo Aphane from the Swaziland Gender Consortium in Swaziland

4. Chulani Kodikara from the Muslim Women Research and Action Forum (MWRAF) in Sri Lanka

Women’s inheritance and property rights (Panel 2)

Strategies for advancing women’s rights to land

8 Feb 2011: 16.00 – 19.00

The multi-country network on Women's Inheritance and Property Rights (WIPR) is organising three panels at the WSF. This network is part of the three-year programme Women Reclaiming and Re-defining Culture, coordinated by Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML) and the Institute for Women’s Empowerment (IWE).

This is the second panel in this series, which will explore strategies that women use to assert their rights to inheritance and property in diverse contexts where they are dispossessed and disempowered. These strategies include awareness raising about rights and laws, legal reform, capacity building, documentation, alliance-building, mobilisation, and others. Speakers will present cases and lessons from projects in Afghanistan, Indonesia, Pakistan, Senegal, Sudan and South Africa.

This workshop relates to Thematic Axis 8: “For the construction and expansion of democratic, political and economic structures and institutions, at a local, national and international level, with the participation of the peoples in decision-making and in the control of public affairs and resources, respecting peoples’ diversity and dignity.”

Defending women's rights to the commons for sustainable environmental justice

9 Feb 2011: 12.30 – 15.30

The multi-country network on Women's Inheritance and Property Rights (WIPR) is organising three panels at the WSF. This network is part of the three-year programme Women Reclaiming and Re-defining Culture, coordinated by Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML) and the Institute for Women’s Empowerment (IWE).

This is the third panel in this series, which will focus on the erosion of women’s rights to land, especially the commons. The discussion will explore ways to defend women’s rights to the commons and the commons themselves in the face of increasing threats from various State and non-State actors.

This workshop relates to Thematic Axis 2: “For...environmental justice, for a universal and sustainable access of humanity to common goods, for the preservation of the planet as source of life, and especially of land, water, seeds, forests, renewable energy sources and biodiversity, guaranteeing the rights of Indigenous, original, traditional, autochthonous, native, stateless, quilombola and riverain peoples and the rights on their territories, resources, languages, cultures, identities and knowledge.”